European Day of the Entrepreneur 8-9 October, 2003, Sofia, Bulgaria1 Good Entrepreneurship Practice at Sofia University Roumen Nikolov Sofia University,

European Day of the Entrepreneur 8-9 October, 2003, Sofia, Bulgaria

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Good Entrepreneurship Practice at Sofia University

Roumen NikolovSofia University, Bulgaria


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Expected full European Union membership by 2007;

Received invitation for NATO membership;

Bulgaria is a member of UN Security Council (took the Presidency in September 2002);

Strategic geographic location – a one hour time difference from Continental Europe;

Effective free trade agreements with most countries in the region; liberalized access to a regional market of over 550 million consumers;

Bulgaria is an integral part of the global economic and political environment


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Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”


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SU - Educational and Scientific Centre of the Country 35,000 students

76 Bachelor’s and over 200 Master’s degree programmes

Over 3000 teachers and researchers

Very important role for the development of the country

Challenges: economic and social changes, new models of education, new role of universities, brain drain

European Space of Higher Education

Sofia University – to become a National and Regional High-Technology and Innovation Centre


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GlobalProduction

Network

GlobalProduction

Network

GlobalR&D

Network

GlobalR&D

Network

InternationalPartnershipsInternationalPartnerships

Sofia UniversityCentre of

ExcellenceIn IST

Endserviceusers

ProfessionalUsers

Researchers

Business

Users

Policy makers

CorporateR&D

SMEs

NGOs

Science & Educ

Centre of IST, Sofia University


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Case Study Conceptual Framework

Clark, B. R. (1998). Creating Entrepreneurial Universities, Organisational Pathways of Transformation. Oxford: Pergamon

Van der Sijde, P. (2000). Entrepreneurship at an Entrepreneurial University, Enschede: University of Twente

entrepreneurial university – it understands the commercial value of knowledge

Minimum of Entrepreneurial Actions for an Entr-Uni: a strengthened steering core; an expanded developmental periphery; a diversified funding base; a stimulated academic heartland; an integrated entrepreneurial culture


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Indicators of Success

Degree of achievement of the ‘5 irreducible minimum of actions’ for an Entrepreneurial University

Number of researchers, teachers, PhDsNumber of international projectsNumber of international and local partnersNumber of MSc programmes


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Background Political and Economic Situation: e-skills gap – demand > supply with

12% per year; Functioning market economy; Not enough modern economic management practice; not enough entrepreneurship and tendency of risk aversion; not enough public support;

Demographic trends: increased number of students – regular, part-time, distance; emigration of high-skilled professionals: internal & external brain-drain, Bulgaria last among 59 countries at WEF; difficult to make up;

Financial Downturn; Relations with Industry – ‘the stronger the university-industry-government

cooperation is, the more competitive is the national economy’; Overall Competitive Ranking of Bulgaria – beyond the first 60 countries; no traditions and strong opposition; entrepreneurial young generation;

Severe Competitive Market – smaller private universities, international universities expansion, e-learning revolution;

Internal considerations – need of adaptation of the university to the new conditions


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Strengthened Steering Core Well organized management core of strong minded

change agents is of crucial importance. Need to build dynamic and more entrepreneurial units;

Centre of IST – operating horizontally across entire university and beyond;

Bulgarian Telework Association – interface with other stakeholders;

Cisco Regional Academy and Microsoft IT Academy;Centre of European RTD Projects;Experimental Technology Park in ICT and

Nanotechnology;Virtech Ltd – an incubated SME;


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Centre of IST organizes European Day of the Entrepreneur, 8-9 Oct., 2003: http://www-it.fmi.uni-sofia.bg/ede


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BgTA is among the organizers of:


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Virtech - an IST eWork Success Story


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Centre of ERTDP organizes:


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Expanded Developmental Periphery - a large network of partnering organizations Ministry of Education and Science, Ministry of Economy, Ministry of

Finance, ICT Development Agency, Coordination Centre for Information, Communication and Management Technologies, Agency of SMEs, etc;

Applied Research and Communication Fun, Information Society Promotion Office – Bulgaria, Bulgarian IT Association – BAIT, Industry Association of Bulgarian Software Development Companies – BASSCOM, Bulgarian Telework Association, Public Computer and Communication Center Association, etc.

Large network of universities under the Virtual Department of Computing ‘John Atanasoff’ Project which comprises 15 Bulgarian universities and the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences;

Cisco, Microsoft, Oracle, etc. Large network of SMEs coordinated by Bulgarian Telework

Association; Large international network Student enterprises initiative.


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E-Democracy & e-Government Project:


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Centre of IST - E-Learning Capacity:


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Another E-Learning Course:


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Sofia University – a Cisco Regional Academy


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ARCADE - Architecture for Reusable Courseware Authoring and Delivery

ARCADEARCADECoreCore

ARCADEARCADECoreCore

Assess-ments

Assess-ments

Assign-ments

Assign-ments

CurriculumManagementCurriculum

ManagementCourse

ManagementCourse

Management

UserManagement

UserManagement

SystemManagement

SystemManagementChatChat

NewsNews

MailsMails

VirtualDisk

VirtualDisk

DiscussionBoard

DiscussionBoard

AuthoringTool

AuthoringTool


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Virtech cooperates with:


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Diversified Funding Base International Projects - EC Fifth Framework Programme, World

Bank, INCO COPERNICUS, PHARE, TEMPUS, Erasmus, Leonardo; National Projects – Agency for ICT Development, Industry; Training for industry, public administration and individuals; Industrial research and development funded by large

companies, such as Atomic Power Plant Kozlodui, Biovet-Peshtera, Silway-Sofia, etc;

Patents and intellectual property rights (IPR) – still not well developed; Some IPR intensive RTD results – ARCADE, Mall2000 B2B Portal, etc.

Venture capital and business angels – under-developed; Sponsorship - general economic and social environment in

Bulgaria does not support this channel to a desired extent;


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Stimulated Academic Heartland Academic heartland is where traditional academic values are

most firmly rooted. When an enterprising university evolves a stronger steering

core, and develops an outreach structure, and diversifies its income streams, its heartland is still found in the traditional academic departments formed around disciplines – new and old – and some interdisciplinary fields of study. Whether they accept or oppose a significant transformation is critical.

As each university is a bottom-heavy organization it is of crucial importance to ensure support for the promoted changes from the members of the basic units.

Excellent research and teaching staff - prerequisite for strengthening the academic heartland;

Entrepreneurial shift depends on the age and size of the university: the smaller – the better;

Sofia University is quite conservative and heavy to transform;


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Integrated Entrepreneurial Culture Lack of entrepreneurial culture in Bulgarian individuals and

organisations is among the most important obstacles to promoting entrepreneurship;

This mentality was cultivated during a long period of communist regime when any type of entrepreneurial activity was considered ‘dangerous’ to the government;

Many of the academy people still keep this attitude which makes the academic environment not supportive, sometimes even hostile to university-industry cooperation;

Many industry organisations neglect cooperation with universities since they are considered to mere producers of academic results that are largely inappropriate to real applications in industry;


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‘Ten Commandments’ of an Entrepreneurial University Leader 1. Do not wait to be innovative until the steering core is

strengthened. You’d better start an ‘underground entrepreneurial revolution’ rather than wait;

2. Do not expect the development periphery to be expanded. Expand it yourself!

3. Do not expect the funding base to be diversified. Diversify it yourself!

4. Do not stimulate the whole academic heartland. Stimulate only those who are willing to be involved and contribute;

5. Do not force building an integrated entrepreneurial culture in the whole organization. Gradually expand this culture by showing positive results and providing customized training;


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‘Ten Commandments’ of an Entrepreneurial University Leader (2)6. Do not put barriers between research, development, education and

training but rather build multiple stable bridges between them;7. Do not restrict international cooperation. Build a speedy highways for

teachers and students mobility and transfer of scientific ideas, technology, know-how and business opportunities. Instead of stimulating the ‘brain-drain’ these measures can actually reduce it;

8. Do not consider projects as ‘frames’ but rather as ‘seeds’ to grow new projects, partnerships and cooperation lines and raise additional funds;

9. Build a stable infrastructure and a critical mass of people covering the whole life cycle of project development and exploitation of results;

10. Cooperate and build networks at any level – team, department, university, region, country, Europe, the whole world. Cooperation and networking is the winning strategy for any business today. This holds true for universities as well.


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Education and Training as a Meta-Industry IDC predicts that the global corporate e-learning market would exceed

$23.1 billion by 2004 (in 1999 it was $1.8 billion); North America will account for 65.2% of the market by 2004 and

Western Europe will be the fastest-growing market; In 2000 the non-IT segment accounted for 24% of the market but it is

expected to capture 53.8% by 2005; Gardner predicts that e-Learning will be the most-used corporate

application on the web by 2005; in 2003 over 50% of all higher education institutions in the world will be

offering e-Learning programmes to students;

e-Learning Industry segments: Content/Publishing; Tools/Enablers; Learning Service Providers (LSPs); Knowledge Hubs/Portals;

Educational e-Tailers; growing number of partnerships between e-Learning vendors

and academic institutions to create ’virtual universities‘ online


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Development of the Bulgarian e-Learning Industry

- Strategic Direction of the New Economy This industry could be considered a ‘meta-industry’ since it

could positively influence all other industry sectors; It could become Bulgaria’s most important asset on its way

to the Knowledge Economy; Foreign direct investments (FDI) have radically changed the

food and beverages sector, cement industry, non-ferrous metallurgy, wholesale trade and banking in Bulgaria;

FDI could radically change the ’knowledge sector‘ of the industry which should be built around the real knowledge producers – universities and research institutions;

We might expect a radical change in building sustainable ‘university-industry-government’ partnerships;

A chance for Bulgaria to leap forward into the ‘knowledge economy’, and Sofia University is prepared to take a leading role.


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Some Estimated Achievements a strengthened steering core – 50%; an expanded developmental periphery – 70%; a diversified funding base – 40%; a stimulated academic heartland – 30%; an integrated entrepreneurial culture – 15%. CIST has helped the Department of IT stabilize its number of

researchers and lecturers at 14 attracted a stable core of more than 30 interdisciplinary researchers

from other universities; 2001 - 5 PhD students enrolled, in 2002- 10 PhD students; 4FP – 4 projects; 5FP – 15 projects; 6FP – 2 projects; + several other,

e.g. from WB international partners - 15 in 1997, nearly 90 in 2003 local partners - 5 in 1997, 150 in 2003 2 MSc programmes in 1997, 6 – in 2002 New Faculty of Applied Sciences under Establishment - 4 BSc & 13

MSc Programmes envisaged.


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Thank you for your attention!

Documents

European Day of the Entrepreneur 8-9 October, 2003, Sofia, Bulgaria1 Good Entrepreneurship Practice at Sofia University Roumen Nikolov Sofia University,